BRITAIN: Labour cracks down on asylum seekers
LONDON — A plane hijacked by Afghan asylum seekers provided the pretext for a resurgence in overt racism against refugees, urged on by right-wing newspapers and Britain's Labour government.
The social climate has become reminiscent of that following Conservative minister Enoch Powell's 1968 warnings of "rivers of blood" if immigration was not stemmed. The neo-Nazi National Front, shaven-headed thugs, have again begun marching with hate slogans through the port towns where refugee problems are most sensitive.
On January 6, an Ariana Airlines Boeing 727 jet was seized by hijackers en route from Kabul to the northern Afghanistan town of Mazar-i-Sharif and flown to Stansted airport outside London. A three-day hostage crisis then ensued.
Tabloid newspaper conjecture declared the hijack a "ruse" to gain political asylum. The conservative Daily Telegraph bemoaned "hijackers, living as political refugees in Britain, subsidised by the taxpayer and receiving free chicken suppers for years".
Rupert Murdoch's Sun claimed Britain was now the "dustbin of the world" and "a soft touch for every scrounger on the planet". Complaining of "freeloaders", their reporter Nick Parker was the only guest to refuse to move from his subsidised third floor room at the Stansted Hilton, which police cleared to create secure accommodation for the released Afghan hostages.
The Afghans were reported to be drinking their hotel rooms' alcohol supply and watching pornographic movies on cable television. The daily bills for their rooms, which police had demanded they remain in for the duration of the hijack, were widely disclosed to be costing the taxpayer £200 a day.
All the hostages were released on January 10 and the hijackers peacefully surrendered. Seventy-three passengers made formal applications for asylum status, 22 men were charged and the remaining 72 were flown home.
National scandal
The Daily Mirror then sought to make the hostage crisis a national scandal, declaring that the annual taxpayers' bill for administering asylum seekers had reached £800 million (about $A1.8 billion), and claiming there were 1.25 million illegal immigrants in Britain.
Southern councils such as Westminster, Kent and Slough began bussing asylum seekers to northern towns, such as Newcastle, Glasgow and Hull, where the relevant authorities were taken unawares. Two Conservative-led local authorities, Kent County Council and the London borough of Hillingdon, warned voters that their council tax bills would increase if they had to continue to support increasing numbers of asylum seekers.
London councils complained that there was a £10 million shortfall in government funds made available for services to the estimated 55,000 asylum seekers now living in Britain's capital. They demanded a further £30 million from Home Office minister Jack Straw to meet welfare costs.
A national dispersal system is now in force, to bus asylum seekers from the English channel ports and lorry stops where they first enter to other parts of the country. Asylum seekers have no choice where they're bussed to.
In spite of the hysteria, the number of new asylum applications fell from 7180 in December to 6110 in January (the peak month was September, with 7355 applications). At the same time, processing of backlogged cases sped up, from 2320 cases in December to 4040 in January.
The average period between application and the processing of an asylum request takes 13 months; over 50% are accepted or given exceptional leave to stay in Britain.
Nevertheless, anti-asylum seeker measures intensified following the arrest of several refugee women for begging with their children at London tube stations and the release of a report by Lord Gardiner into organised crime and the "hidden economy" of social security fraud and tax avoidance.
Gardiner's report was used to tar asylum seekers, who were accused of being "spongers", "cadgers", a "menace", a "curse" and a "flood". Although the report barely touched upon refugees committing financial fraud, tabloid newspapers competed against each other to uncover "organised begging", sending undercover reporters onto the streets of Britain and Romania, where a large proportions of the Gypsy refugees lived before the Romanian government orchestrated a wave of hate to drive them out.
Harsh measures
Straw introduced harsh new measures to deal with asylum seekers on April 3. Banned from obtaining welfare benefits, they are now issued weekly vouchers worth £36.50 (A$80) with which they are expected to pay for all their living needs. This is only 70% of the equivalent "income support" benefit for the out of work.
Moreover, a clause in the voucher issue stipulates that they must be surrendered completely for goods, with no facility for change. This proviso was introduced by Sodexho Press, the company with the contract to run the scheme, as a cash incentive for the 4411 participating retailers. Sodexho has even employed "mystery shoppers" to approach retail outlets with vouchers to ensure that the no-change policy is enforced and insists that refunds for faulty goods not be given in cash.
Lorry drivers were also made liable for carrying illicit passengers in from Europe and face fines of up to £2000, regardless of whether they were personally responsible for importing their passengers. Within 24 hours of the new laws being introduced on April 3, four drivers were arrested and fined £32,000 after 16 people were found to have smuggled themselves into Britain in the backs of their vehicles.
Conservative Party leader William Hague intensified the political squabble over asylum seekers when he insisted that a future Conservative government would intern all asylum seekers in detention camps, regardless of their plight. He suggested a maximum six-week period for processing their applications for asylum in Britain. Hague also proposed a "Removals Agency" to fast-track the ejection from Britain of unsuccessful applicants.
The Labour Party responded to suggestions that they were "soft" on dealing with refugees by pointing out that Labour had a "better" record in their three-year rule than the Conservatives for processing applications.
Straw also announced that 3000 Kosovars, evacuated by the United Nations' humanitarian emergency program and given 12 months' temporary protection, would now be ordered home again. "Enforcement action will be taken in due course against those who do not go back voluntarily", he warned.
The international humanitarian aid charity Oxfam refused to cooperate with the voucher scheme, calling it "penny-pinching". Launching a "No to no change" initiative, Oxfam printed mock vouchers entitling the bearer to "racist abuse, press hostility and government neglect".
Three other charities, Barnardos, Shelter and Marie Curie, all joined Oxfam in refusing the vouchers in their hundreds of high street stores. The protest has also been backed by Save the Children and the Scottish Trades Union Council.
On April 14, Transport and General Workers Union general secretary Bill Morris called for the strongest campaign his union could mobilise to halt the "degrading, divisive and stigmatising" voucher system. He also warned, "The voucher system could be an experiment for the unemployed and those on state benefits who may also get vouchers. Recognise where this is going. We are just one step away."
The head of one of Britain's biggest unions and a key Labour Party backer, Morris accused the Home Office and Jack Straw of "giving life to racists" by nurturing "a climate of fear and loathing" during his address to a Trades Union Commission Black and Asians conference.
Exploiting prejudice
British politicians were also criticised by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The ruling Labour Party and Conservative opposition were censured for breaking an all-party agreement, negotiated by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), not to exploit prejudice for political gain.
The two main parties, whose spokespeople began a furious public row to shift the blame in response to the judgment, were also criticised for "inflammatory language" by the third party in mainstream British politics, the Liberal Democrats. Liberal home affairs spokesperson Simon Hughes handed the CRE a dossier of recent speeches on the immigration issue by ministers, as well as the Conservative Party's May local election manifesto, which warns of racketeers "flooding our country with bogus asylum seekers".
Criticism has even come from government circles. A report for cabinet prepared by the Institute of Employment Studies reveals endemic racism in the promotion of civil service staff, including the Home Office.
One of the Home Office's own ministers, Mike O'Brien, declared "If the Home Office is institutionally racist, then it follows that all its decisions and culture must also be affected. How else can you explain their recent decision to charge a £10,000 bond from Indian visitors; or the changes to the criminal justice system that will disproportionally affect the black community; or the utterly insane plan to give asylum-seekers vouchers instead of money?"
O'Brien accused his own Labour government of "redistributing wealth from penniless refugees to supermarket giants".
Morris' allegation that the Labour government was "giving life to racists" has also been borne out.
On April 8, the National Front was granted permission to march against asylum seekers in Margate, Kent. Five counter-demonstrators, including a local councillor, were arrested and charged with public order offences when they turned out to object.
Soon after, Straw took the decision to bar all future asylum seekers from residing in Kent. Straw declared that Kent had taken "more than its share", provoking 20 other local authorities, including Northampton and the sparsely populated New Forest, to pressure Straw into conceding that they too were "full up".
A plan by Southwark police in south London to take a group of Kosovar refugees to a football match on April 15 also had to be abandoned after Millwall Football Club received letters, phone calls and messages posted on internet sites threatening violence by racist hooligans. The match against Blackpool, part of Millwall's annual anti-racism day, went ahead without the Kosovar spectators.
BY ALEC SMART